Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor, as everyone knows, doesn’t care as much about altcoins as BTC, including Ripple (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH). In a podcast he attended, Saylor talked about the classification of these altcoin projects as securities. Here are the details…
Michael Saylor speaks out against the biggest altcoin projects
Citing the legal battle between Ripple Labs and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Saylor stated that he believes Ripple is an unregistered security. “Pretty clear,” said the MicroStrategy CEO. “This is a company. The company has many owners. They sell it to the public, but never take the company public. There is no explanation,” he said.
He shared the same opinion about Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. According to Saylor, ETH is an unregistered security because it is “controlled by several people – the Ethereum Foundation and ConsenSys… Just like FTT, just like Solana.” MicroStrategy CEO revealed that almost all altcoins are securities and should be subject to SEC enforcement. Saylor used the following statements:
I think the best thing for anyone would be for the SEC to shut down pretty much all of them. None of it is ethical. While Bitcoin is an ethical commodity, all altcoins are nothing more than equity tokens issued by a company to avoid going public. Moreover, they are engaged in securities fraud. Especially Ethereum.
Saylor points to contract where Ethereums are locked
The Bitcoin bull pointed out that Ethereum currently has $20 billion in ETH tokens locked in a deposit contract, and it is currently unclear when withdrawals will be possible. It is still not possible to withdraw money from the ETH 2.0 deposit contract, as we have also reported as Kriptokoin.com. Currently, uses are planned for the Shanghai update, which will be the next major update after the merge. The fork is currently scheduled for March 2023.
In response to this, Saylor criticized the fact that it is a small group of people who decide whether and when redemptions from the deposit contract are allowed. He explained that this meant securities. MicroStrategy CEO said that we cannot trust a few engineers, a company or a CEO if a crypto asset is to be a commodity. Saylor used the following statements:
Now, isn’t that the definition of an investment contract? A bank can take $20 billion of your assets, stop transactions and say, ‘You’ll never get your money back, maybe in 2024. We are not sure. We can pay you interest.’ If he says… This is the definition of security. It is an investment of money in a joint business that relies on the efforts of others in anticipation of profit. If a person can make a decision, it is not a commodity.
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